Missing Buffy Frasier
by PaBurke
Summary: The Mother and Child Reunion, from a tth challenge


**Missing: Buffy Fraiser**

**By PaBurke**

**Disclaimer: I own neither SG1 nor Buffy. That goes to Gecko and Joss, respectively. No copyright infringement intended.**

**Distribution: TtH**

**Spoilers: Season 2 of BtVS and Season 4 of SG1**

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**Challenge Issuer: **MrGordo

**Challenge Name: **The Mother & Child Reunion

**Challenge Description: **We've all seen "Buffy meets her true Father." stories. Well how about some stories where Buffy is reunited with her true biological mother?

Rather Buffy was adopted as a baby or kidnapped as part of some larger plot is up to the Author.

I LIKE Joyce. And am not setting out to bash her. (Unlike Hank who deserves heavy Bashing.) But frankly I always thought Buffy needed far more emotional support. Joyce as good a person as she was. Buffy didn't think Joyce was strong enough to deal with all the stress that was Buffy's life. So she started bottling her emotions up.

Buffy needed more of a shoulder to lean \cry on then she got. And because of that and Hank's abandonment, As time wore on the more emotionally repressed she became. The more she distanced herself from those around her. Became more Slayer and less Buffy.

Some Mothers I'd personally love to see for Buffy: Lorelei Gilmore, CJ Craigg, Olivia Benson, Janet Frasier, Samantha Carter, Dana Scully, Monica Reyes, but really anyone the author chooses as B's true mother is cool.

romantic pairing for Buffy can be Fem slash or Het.

****

AN:/ Obviously I picked SG1 as I often do when given a choice. And since the pairing wasn't mandated, I'm ignoring it. I did this with a little bit of a twist, deciding not to focus on either Buffy or Janet, but Cassie. But I think it worked.

****

"Hello?" Cassie answered the telephone excitedly. Damion was supposed to call tonight and, if rumor was to believed, ask her out on a date.

"Janet, I screwed up! She's gone! Janet, our daughter is gone!"

Cassie blinked. This hysterical female was not Damion. What a minute? Mom had another daughter? Why hadn't she heard about this mysterious daughter? "Ah, ma'am?"

Cassie couldn't even hear breathing on the other end of the line. "Ma'am?" she prompted the other woman.

"This is the Fraiser household, isn't it?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'm Cassie Fraiser and if you'll give me a moment, I'll take down your number. I assume Mom will know who you are?" Cassie bit her lip after speaking the question. She was digging for information and she was being pretty obvious about it. Even Jack or Daniel would have asked the question in such a way as to get the maximum amount of Intel.

"Yes, she will," the woman whispered. "But you can write 'Joyce' next to the number."

Cassie reached across the breakfast bar and grabbed a pen from the pen cup. In the process, she managed to dump the cup and pens scattered across the kitchen. Damnit. "Wait a minute, ma'am, as I get a paper."

"Take as long as you need."

Cassie thought that the other woman, Joyce, sounded defeated. The teenager fished around in the kitchen drawers for paper, then gave up and dug into her bookbag. She started rambling as a way to cover for her deficiency, and if she was lucky, she might get the dish too. "Sorry, I'm having problems. You probably know how my mom is, everything has a place and she's the only person who really knows where that place is and she changes it everytime something bad happens at work . . ."

"Or when a patient dies," Joyce finished the thought.

Yes, Cassie decided, this woman knew her mother rather well. "So how did you meet mom?"

"Undergraduate studies. The lottery put us together freshman year," a hurt chuckle, "Somehow we managed not only to not kill the other but ended up as pretty good friends as well."

"Two pre-med majors? I can only imagine the carnage," Cassie probed.

Joyce sighed, but Cassie could hear the smile in her voice. "Your mother was pre-med, of course. I was Art History."

Score! True information. Maybe she was learning something from Jack. "That's funny. I haven't decided what I want to major in in college, but either one of those majors interest me."

"You are a senior?"

Cassie could tell that Joyce was genuinely interested and not just fishing for information of her own. "Not yet, ma'am, just a lowly freshman. But it's never too early."

Joyce chuckled. "You are showing Janet's influence right there."

"Nah," Cassie teased. "Mom probably knew exactly what she wanted to do from the age of ten."

"Eight," corrected Joyce. Then she paused. "If I remember correctly, Janet's brother? or was it a male cousin? fell down and hurt himself and then the doctors found out that the fall was indicative of a deeper medical problem."

"Hmmm, I don't know the age but that story lines up. And it was her cousin, Matthew."

Joyce paused again. What was she thinking about? Her daughter who was gone? Did Cassie dare to ask the question? "What grade is your daughter in?"

"She's a junior," Joyce whispered. "Do you have a pen yet?"

"Yes, ma'am. And paper, too."

Cassie could hear the pained smile.

"The number's 475-298-2677. Got it?"

"Let me repeat it back to you," Cassie answered. She repeated the number and then dove back into the interrogation. "I don't recognize the area code."

"It's California," said Joyce.

"So is your daughter a blonde, surfer babe?" Crud! That was way too irreverent a question to ask a grieving mother.

To her surprise, Joyce answered. "When she wants to be."

What kind of answer was that? "Well, Mrs . . . Joyce, I'll give Mom the message as soon as she gets home which should be . . ." Cassie craned her neck around to see the kitchen clock. "Soon."

Someone cleared their throat and Cassie whirled in place. Had someone snuck into . . . oh, it was just her mother, with a somewhat evil grin on her face.

Cassie returned the grin. "Joyce, Mom's home. I'll hand the phone off to her now."

"Thank you Cassie, for talking with me."

"My pleasure."

Janet looked slightly confused as she accepted the phone. Cassie delighted in teasing her. "It's Joyce. She has news about your _other_ daughter."

Janet blanched slightly, but then her doc-face came to the forefront. "Joyce? What's the emergency?" Janet looked fearful. "Is she dead?"

Cassie watched at the blood slowly seeped back into her Mom's face. Well, at least the mystery girl was still alive.

Janet jerked her head at Cassie, a non-too-subtle hint that she was eavesdropping on a private conversation. Cassie rolled her eyes, grabbed her bookbag and made for her bedroom. She dropped her homework on the bed and then flopped down next to the pile. Her mom was talking too softly for her to hear if she sat at the top of the stairs, but . . .

Mom had the phone by her bed, on the same line. Could Cassie listen from there? Would her mother catch her? What kind of punishments might Cassie invoke by willfully disobeying? She'd be grounded, which meant that she'd have to tell Damion 'no' if he ever got around to asking her on a date. Or explain the whole embarrassing situation. Was Damion worth getting the goods on her mysterious, previously-unknown sister?

Hell, yeah!

Cassie flopped her books open to the correct chapter and made sure to give herself a clear pathway to the bed. She might have to make a quick get-away. Besides, if she could eavesdrop and get away with it, who was she to argue?

Cassie tiptoed out of her room. A slight murmur indicated that Janet was still on the phone. Janet's bedroom door was wide open. Cassie made her way to the bed and slowly, gently picked up the phone's receiver. She held her breath and waited.

Her mother didn't immediately order her to get off the phone. That hurdle was hurdled. She listened to the conversation.

"What did you and Hank name her anyway?"

"Buffy."

Cassie slapped a hand over her mouth to cover her snort of disbelief.

Janet wasn't pleased. "I know I told you that you could name her anything, but really? Buffy?"

Joyce breathed heavily. "Hank picked it out. He did all the paperwork so that she'd never show up as your child. You know that he did. That was the plan in the beginning. We just hadn't picked out a name before he went into the office and he had to choose something while he was there. From what I understand, his paperwork was flawless. No one has ever questioned it. Dick never once came looking."

"So Hank is an excellent crooked lawyer." Janet paused. "I'm sorry Joyce, that was out of line. He is your husband."

"Ex-husband," Joyce corrected. "And you are correct, but you and I, we used his crookedness to hide your baby girl from your ex-husband. And it worked."

"Yes, it did. She was safe."

Joyce was weeping quietly. "I'm sorry, Janet. I thought that if I threatened her, she'd cave and tell me the truth. I certainly didn't mean that she was really thrown out of the house."

"Well, she is Dick's and my daughter." Janet chuckled ruefully. "As headstrong as to the two of us were, it only surprises me that she hasn't run away before."

Cassie held her breath in the awkward silence.

Janet could fill in the blanks. "She, Buffy ran away before."

"She came back."

"Why didn't you call me last time?" asked Janet.

"I didn't think about it," Joyce confessed. "We were so busy looking for her . . . and fighting, that we didn't even think to call you. And we had many more leads to follow. This time she just disappeared off the bus. Last time, she came back and things seemed to go back to normal. If you count divorce as normal."

"Do you know what the trigger was this time?"

Joyce sighed. "Her boyfriend. Something happened and he went off the deep end and was going to kill a lot of people. She felt it was her duty to stop him. She didn't think that the cops could stop it."

Cassie raised her eyebrows at that? What had Buffy's boyfriend been planning?

"Give me the name and number of the private investigator you're using and I'll see what I can do from here. I'll pool my resources with his and we'll find her."

Joyce responded positively to Janet's take-charge attitude. "Rupert's less of an investigator and more of a concerned friend with many contacts. Thank you, Janet. I really am sorry."

"I can't blame you, Joyce." Janet admitted. "I have been having some serious rows with my other daughter. Now I have another nightmare to add to my dreams about what trouble Cassie could fall into."

Cassie snorted and then bit her lip. Crud! Had her mother heard that? Well, at least she could promise to never run away, at least not any further than Jack's house.

"Bye, Janet."

"Bye, Joyce."

Cassie heard the click and was about to put the phone down when a new voice spoke on the California end.

"That explains why we never found Buffy before Merrick," the man had a distinct British accent. What did that mean?

Janet bellowed from downstairs. _"Cassandra Lee Fraiser!"_

Cassie put down the bedroom extension in a hurry. "Coming, Mom!" She skipped steps on her way down to the first floor.

Janet was waiting with her arms folded across her chest. "You were eavesdropping," she accused.

Cassie matched her posture-for-posture. "It concerned me."

"No, it didn't."

Cassie set her jaw. "She's my sister, too. I want to be part of the group to find her."

"First we have to get close. And depending on where she is, we'll discuss this later. If it looks like it's going to be too dangerous, no."

"You going to ask Sam and Jack for help?" asked Cassie.

"Yes," said Janet. "I'm sure they'll be able to find her. They'll start in LA."

. . . .

. . . .

Within a week, Cassie, as the least threatening of the SGC group, walked up to a petite blonde waitress with a name tag that read 'Anne' and stuck out her hand. "Buffy? I'm Cassie Fraiser. I'm your sister. Both your moms sent me."

Buffy, it seemed, had the curiosity of a cat. She didn't run away from Cassie because she wanted to hear what the younger teen had to say.

****

I fin /I


End file.
